thecapitol | New kind of victory.

New kind of victory.

Who| Everyone on the District Tours.
What| The Celebration dinners for all the Districts.
Where| Specified in thread.
When| The second night they are there.
Warnings/Notes| Find your district below. Leave any questions here. And please add any needed warning into your subject line when appropriate.

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Beck didn't understand about anything from everyone else coming to participate in the Games; to be honest, he never really looked into it. He just though that everything happened like this. That it was always this way.

Hearing that they would always lose a couple of kids...that kind of stung. Not because he was kind of like, sacrificing himself, but because the Capitol made it that way before.

Who could do that...?

Beck smiled and nodded, turning back to the party before them. "That's good, then. I didn't...I didn't know that things happened like that before we came." Now he felt a little guilty...

"Sorry. I didn't know."

"No, it's okay." Peeta put his hands up, shaking his head. It wasn't his fault for not knowing. The Capitol didn't hide it, since there really no way for it to be hid. But it was mentioned fewer and fewer times. You didn't see it on TV anymore. There were no reapings held, not anymore. That had always been the reminder, the biggest one. Now it seemed like it happened years ago.

"No one brings it up anymore, not since they started bringing in the other tributes. The games used to be a yearly thing, too. Now it's almost every month, there's a new arena." He looked back over the crowd. "But it's..."

He hesitated. There was no reason for the new tributes to feel guilty. It was the star struck lovers fault. It was his fault.

"I'm sorry, that you are here. I'm really sorry that you had to be brought here to play along."

Peeta must have been around for the very beginning of the Games. Not the beginning exactly, but whenever things changed. The way he fit in with the district here, and now he just knew everything that happened before...how long had he been here? Had he actually been raised with this kind of stuff?

It seemed awful. Beck felt kind of sorry for him.

"It's not your fault." Beck said, giving Peeta a smile as he looked over towards him. "You don't have to apologize. It is what it is, I guess."

Peeta laughed, a soft laugh, one without much humor in it. This is what it is. But is what they're doing, is it better Because that's what the Capitol thinks. The districts don't think that, and the rebellion didn't, either.

They'd been trying to do something, he and Katniss. But they didn't even know where they'd start.

Peeta smiled back, taking a drink. "No. It is my fault." The districts were easier to talk in without being overheard. Not that they were totally free, but.

"It's my fault. Mine and Katniss. If we hadn't... our game was the last one, before they started taking you guys. And we were the reason for that."

Nobody told him about that, either.

Beck knew that it was some kind of earthblowing rebellion, or something like that. He only heard that from the tributes, though. In regards to who did it and when this was suddenly started, he had no idea. So they were the two that started all of this, huh?

...Okay, so was he a little angry? Sure. But not at them.

"You didn't know any better, right?" Beck put his feelings to the side; it wasn't like Katniss and Peeta would have known. "I still don't think it's either of your faults. You didn't know this would happen."

This was honestly the first time he'd ever said those words out loud. He'd said plenty of times before that he was sorry. Everyone thought that it was just because they were brought here, and he was sorry for that.

But the relief from saying this was almost terrifying for him. It was their fault. And he was almost glad to hear that tiny bit of anger in his voice.

"We didn't know that they would do this." Peeta frowned. "I think we knew... something. The rule of the games is that only one person wins, so one person lives. And we forced their hand, but we didn't." He shook his head.

"I'm sorry, that you were brought here. But we all, all of us here... we thank you."

Beck saw that now.

He watched as the people danced, and raised their glasses. Even though the games were hard to imagine now, it was even harder to imagine every district sacrificing two of their kids against their will. It must feel good, having someone to go for the games for their kids. And to always be that tribute, even if it meant sacrificing their lives for it.

After learning everything about the Capitol, and how barbaric it all was...he was okay with being a sacrifice. For these people, anyway.

Beck stepped forward, a new kind of energy blossoming inside of him. "Want to join them?" He asked, smiling to Peeta.

Twelve had a lot of hardships. It couldn't be compared to other districts, because that wouldn't be fair, to compare them to each other. All right, district one and two could be compared to the rest, but it sometimes felt like they were just extensions of the Capitol.

But two winners in the past, before him and Katniss, and one was a chronic alcoholic. And maybe they hadn't had any winners, among the other tributes. But everyone loved them, to some degree. A rebellion may have been slowed down, but it would never die, no matter how hard they tried.

"Sure." Peeta grinned back. "Come on, have you had anything to eat yet? My family did all of the baking, we've been working on it all day."

"You can cook?" Beck was so awful at cooking. If you asked him to repair something, oh sure. But he couldn't make sense of ingredients. In Argon, energy was energy. No flavor, no nothing. Not like User food, anyway.

Beck smiled. "The food's over here, right?"

"Yeah! I'm more of a baker, but cooking has always been the next logical step for me." Peeta nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, the food is over here."

He leads Beck to where there are multiple tables put out, and a few peacekeepers around. Very lax with this, though it usually hasn't been, especially in the past few months or so. That's the part they want to hide, but if you see the Districts, then you know.

"All of the meat was supplied by Rooba, the butcher. Well, the Capitol got it for this party, but they had to go through her for a lot of it. And the Mellark Bakery kind of did the rest, with people at the Hob helping out with little things." It was nice to show someone around in a sense.

Beck eyeballs the peacekeepers. Compared to the rest of District 12, they stick out like sore thumbs. There wasn't any of those guys in the Capitol, were there?. But Peeta's not really paying any attention to them, so he falls right in sync. Better to play dumb, rather than cause any trouble. Assuming that these guys were trouble, anyway.

He looked around at the tables of food, and smiled. Despite how...simple this district looked, the food actually smelled pretty good. Beck didn't want to say he downright judged them, but he kind of did.

"This all looks really good." He said, looking to Peeta and smiling. "Did you help at all with this?"

Peacekeepers are standard in all districts, and Peeta never bothered to notice them now. If something was happening, sure, they could be a problem. But there were more here today then usual. And he only paid a little bit of attention to them.

Some things weren't changing any time soon. "It's all really good." Peeta laughed. "And yeah. I helped out with the cakes and cookies, here. I'm okay with regular cooking, so I didn't help with that part."

Like he had said, his family had done the baking. Of course he helped with it.

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New kind of victory.

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